


Barbarus

by Volantis



Series: BARBARUS: a Fred-104/Veta Lopis Series [3]
Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Check story notes for possible warnings on each chapter, Developing Relationship, F/M, Gen, Hopefulness, Post Halo: Retribution, Reflection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28444026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volantis/pseuds/Volantis
Summary: This is the third installation of the series, and begins immediately following 'Light Years Away' and 'Closer Than You Know'. Both prior stories are rather required reading for this fic to make any sense, really.Thank you for reading! ' u '
Relationships: Frederic-104/Veta Lopis
Series: BARBARUS: a Fred-104/Veta Lopis Series [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037559
Comments: 11
Kudos: 14





	1. Good Morning, Mom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the third installation of the series, and begins immediately following 'Light Years Away' and 'Closer Than You Know'. Both prior stories are rather required reading for this fic to make any sense, really.   
> Thank you for reading! ' u '

Veta was slumped in her chair, a flat gaze hovering over her cup, only half hearing Mark's voice. He was seated on her cot, not more than five feet away, just at the edge of her sight, animatedly gesturing with his hands.   
Ten minutes ago, the boy had let himself in - as he does - and woken her; coffee and a protein bar waiting at her desk. By the time she'd ambled to the chair, he'd had her cot made up, and folded the sweater she'd slept in. Hair tangled, yawning, and rubbing her eyes while booting the laptop, her morning had taken that first sharp turn after grabbing for her blinking commpad. 

Four small written words later, and the fog of sleep had been miles away. 

**\-- I miss you too...//**

_'I miss you too'_  
The thrum of her heart was still heavy in her ears, as the small device sat loosely in her hand. The short missive was a clarion call to a flood of thoughts of memories. Of rigid professionalism that'd gradually permitted some shy smiles and awkward laughter. Of conversations that would grow longer, friendlier...often later. Months - _years_ , as they'd passed, had seen jokes, and arguments, and sass that'd stopped feeling uncharacteristic after a while - learning it, like many other quirks, had simply always been there.   
After Baby Dragon had finally taken her training wheels off, Veta saw Fred less and less. They'd kept up as best they were able, but the new orientation of things had been a diluted version at best, having to remain stringently mindful of words passed along Waypoint comms.   
It was in that new and constant separation, that distance, that she'd really noticed the change. The depth of his absence was irritatingly in everything; in everywhere. 

The first gap had hardly stretched a couple months, and yet when they'd reunited it had been like coming home. Seeing his warm smile every day, settling back into knowing glances, and passing concerns...those little touches, and laughs that'd made things so _clear_ \- that she had been an irritating absence in his everything and everywhere as well. Fred, always seeming just on the edge of saying or doing something to let her know he felt it too. He'd not been able to hide it well, or maybe just hadn't known how. Maybe he wasn't hiding anything. Could be he just didn't know the right words. Veta swallowed hard as the dull pain of longing crept up through her chest. 

Fast forward, to the creeping uncertainty she'd felt before their last, long, goodbye - almost five months ago now...it'd been that pressing loom of the unknown for her to step beyond her nerves and take a chance.   
Veta glanced to the top of the desk. _'Always saying goodbye,'_ she thought. _'We're always just saying goodbye...'_  
That final farewell had culminated in the warmth of his hands, and the rarity of a stolen embrace that'd felt endless; a few quiet words whispered in a dim hallway.   
_"Don't go disappearing on me,"_ he'd said. Veta felt her frown deepen. 

The memory _could_ have been beautiful, but it felt sullied in the drag of hindsight. How, not an hour after he'd left, while wrapped up in the clag of documentation, she'd shot him a cold, impersonal, message, requesting some logistics information, and he'd followed up in similar tone after an uncharacteristic delay. The marginal pause could have been anything, really...but, later Veta had obsessed over the thought that her frigid demeanor may have sent an entirely different sort of message in it's subtext - that their intimate experiences were an infractional shame, better kept as secrets. She'd wanted to reach back out to Fred after that, to say anything to fill the silence. A harmless 'hello' would have been fine, but her reproach had kept her from it, and the hours of sleep lost in the following weeks had reminded her of her derision every day since. He'd asked- told her not to disappear; whispered it in a voice almost too soft to be his.   
To know now...that he'd been just waiting for her-

**"Mom."**

Veta blinked quickly several times and turned to face Mark, his eyes wide in question.   
"-yeah, no no, that's, uh..." she stammered, scrunching up her brows and nose, frowning at Mark's confused expression, and exhaled sharply through her nose.   
"...I'm so sorry, Mark, I...kind of blanked out a bit. Just still not all here, I think. One of those mornings, you know?" Veta managed, before gathering herself and carefully lightening her tone. "Thank you for breakfast. Maybe you could swing by later? We can pick this back up to the part before I went stargazing?" she said, smiling quickly and hoping to assuage his concern.   
Veta truly valued the easy familiarity Mark shared with her these days. Ash had proved to be something of a mommy's boy fairly early on, though it had been Olivia who'd first begun opening up to her. With Mark though...it'd been a hard road with him, and she knew she had only herself to blame for their rocky start. 

Mark stretched his arms and stood. "I'd like that, yeah," he nodded, giving her a lopsided smirk. "Oh - and, Ash has the commpad today, so if you need us for anything, just shoot him a text," he quickly added. "We'll just be at the gym and the track for a couple hours."   
Veta nodded, but her smile gradually began to falter when the boy awkwardly paused, looking bothered just beneath the surface. She waited patiently as he gathered himself, careful never to rush him from his thoughts, as he took a tentative step forward. 

"Maybe..." his voice pitched slightly. "Maybe, we could talk to Housing again and see about getting you reassigned to our bunk? There's plenty of space for another bed, and it's kinda- I mean...we don't-" his eyes were everywhere in the room except on her, as he shifted his weight from one foot to the next. "It just feels like I- like we sleep better, when we're all together. I know you need a workspace though, so maybe they'll let you keep this room as an office?"

Veta tilted her head and tightened her lips a bit. "Maybe. Can't hurt to ask again, right? Just be prepared for another denial though, okay?" She raised an index finger as his mouth opened, silencing him. "And nobody is sleeping on the floor, Mark, we've discussed it. We're just here for a short time, and I'm right across the hall - you guys just let yourselves in anyway." Veta brightened a bit, cocking an eyebrow up at him, hoping the dull humor would replace his unrest.   
Mark finally met her eyes and slowly nodded. His thin smile not reaching his eyes this time. 

With a quick little wave he made to leave, before stopping in the doorway and turning back, pointing an accusing finger at her, though disarmed with a softened expression.   
"Please don't forget to eat." He was gone before she could quip back at him. 

Veta breathed out a small laugh and turned toward her computer, intent to get some work done, before letting her gaze linger on the commpad. She couldn't stop herself, one hand already reaching for it. A few minutes slipped away, as she read Fred's message again and again, lips just barely forming the words as she whispered it back to herself. There was just no helping it - the smile that grew widely over her lips, cheeks warming, as she imagined it - softer, closer, lower - in that rich baritone of his voice.  
Undeniably, the thought was... _wonderful_ , but...

Veta pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, _'...is it realistic?'_. Turning the commpad over, the glaring pyramid of ONI's deeply stamped sigil just stared back, cold and empty. Letting the small device drop to the desk, she leveled a tired expression at the laptop.

\-----

Forty minutes slunk by with little of value getting done, as Veta alternated between past-due follow-up reports, considering a hundred unused responses to Fred, and forcibly mediating a less than diplomatic conversation between two other teams of agents. Veta rolled her eyes at their most recent snipes at one another over Waypoint.   
_'Like sea birds fighting over an old chip...'._

Normally, she would have muted Waypoint and avoided being drawn into clownish discourse with people she hardly knew, but the distraction seemed oddly therapeutic as she cast a sideways glance at the commpad again; if only there were drawers on the desk.  
All things considered, the abject nonsense flying between literal shadow operatives had been a perfect diversion to ward off the morning's jumbled emotions, as she suddenly remembered she had to review the Gammas homework as well. Veta laughed to herself; their curricula wasn't quite 'homework', but referring to it as such seemed to help restore a little normality to the teens.   
She pursed her lips. It felt odd to consider how much older they were now - Mark and Olivia soon to turn eighteen; Ash, a year younger. The three had chosen December twenty-seventh as their shared birthday; a date she'd later learned marked their arrival to a place called Camp Currahee, where they'd begun their Spartan training together.   
Never the less, the three often fluctuated between being overtly professional one minute, and distinctly childish the next. Filling in all the gaps they'd missed along the way was a never ending task.   
  
Veta parsed through a few files, collecting their assignments into neatly organized tabs. The first time she'd been instructed to manage the Gamma's education had been an eye-opening experience. Having expected little more than gross propaganda, the sophisticated depth of their lessons had been jarring - astrophysics, genetics, calculus, history of places and people and events she'd never heard of, never mind the complex military stratagem and tactical theory. Her first immediate concern had been in feeling too under-educated to properly manage and review their work at all; a wound on her pride to be certain, but also to her ethics.   
She'd never let herself forget about the cold assumptions she'd made of them, filing the Spartans in as dumb jocks and trigger pullers. In an effort to address both concerns, she made a habit of joining them for their studies, finding the exercises not only educational, but excellent opportunities for more bonding experiences. She was endlessly marveled by their responsible accountability when she'd tiredly forget to issue new assignments. Well, mostly it was Ash who'd remind her, but it also never escaped her notice how eagerly Mark and Olivia often turned to him for direction; a hold over from a different time. Another piece of history they'd slowly and carefully been sharing with her. 

Veta smirked to herself, puffing out a single, brassy, laugh. The formality and richness of Fred's prior frequent comms _should_ have tipped her off that the kids wouldn't be scribbling in colouring books. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. It was that dictional elegance that made his last message all the more impactful.   
_'I miss you too...,'_ she thought. Short. Blunt. Emotional.   
Veta chewed lightly on the inside of her lip. There was just no way it'd been the first thing he'd thought to send - Fred didn't rush into anything - but it _had_ been what he'd decided on, and that was what mattered. That **he** thought it mattered. 

Veta leaned back as far as the small chair would allow, and stared into the drab grey ceiling, fingers toying with the sleeves of her wool sweater.   
It was still strange, that not four years earlier she'd still been on Gao, virtually living a separate life - never having left the planet's surface, no idea what ONI was; no Ferrets, no Blue Team. No Fred.   
Turning her head, Veta let her gaze waver on the drab beige blanket over her cot. When she'd walked in the room yesterday, the colour had immediately reminded her of the worn old couch left behind in her small apartment.   
She and Cirilo had put a lot of hours into that bedraggled old thing. He'd be over most nights...and _most nights_ would be innocent enough - movies, dinner, work usually, but sometimes they'd just sit there, and have long conversations. They'd talk into the night and early hours. She'd let him dim the lights, but never turn them off - _never_ off...she hadn't been ready for that yet. She'd offer fragments of deeply protected feelings that felt barbed when spoken, and he'd never interrupt - Cirilo. He'd always just sit and listen; answering only if asked.   
A smirk pulled at her lips - never mind that he'd also been an unabashed flirt and a cheeky asshole, but...one of her most trusted friends all the same. He'd helped her bear the weight of a lot of difficult memories - never telling her to simply throw them away; never demanding to heft them all; never cooing or pitying.   
Folding him in had been frightening, and maybe even a little ill-advised, professionally, but the risk had yielded an invaluable relationship. Moreover, it had actually improved their professional chemistry, learning to map and navigate each other's weaknesses-   
_'Not weaknesses...'_ she thought, quickly correcting herself. _'Adaptations not always well suited to the conditions, yes, but...not weaknesses.'_

Rubbing the back of an arm over her eyes, she sunk back and let it rest there against her brow.   
Admittedly, as time had passed, she found herself thinking back to Cirilo, and her life on Gao, less and less. There was a palpable sort of shame to it all, just allowing her past to recede.   
Veta shook her head. _'You're not forgotten. I promise...'_

How _could_ she ever forget? Cirilo had died terribly in those caves, along with the rest of her investigational team. People - friends - that she'd known for years.   
Gao's bloody finale had been merciless and terrifying, setting into motion some of the most harrowing and unbelievable events of her life up through that point. Looking back with a keen eye however, revealed she'd always been living along a timeline highlighted in a history of violence. Over thirty years of just scraping along, clinging desperately to any thin hope of comfort or belonging. In reality, Gao had taken everything from her - family, friends, a childhood and a lifetime of trust. 

She would give Cirilo the proper mourning that he fiercely deserved - some day. When she figured out how. 

Veta rocked forward and let her feet sit flat on the floor, her laptop now darkened in stand-by, while the commpad chirped incessantly with the continuous crowing of her associates. She took a long look around each of the same, bland, grey walls and stood, grabbing the commpad off the desk and muting the chatty conversation log before dropping it again.   
Her distaste for wandering the decks of these sprawling facilities would have to be tempered - she needed to clear her head.   
Carding a hand back through her hair, Veta straightened her clothing and stepped out into the hallway with no destination in mind. 

The commpad sat forgotten on her desk, bleeping out a single chirp to the empty room. 


	2. Unwelcome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to err on the side of caution with a warning: this chapter includes descriptions of induced sensations of panic and fear.

Fred stepped into the hall outside the tech lab and headed toward a lift, shaking his head every few steps. The readouts across his HUD were still jittering and repopulating, even after a battery of tests had confirmed the AI was properly coupled. Clipped in for less than a few hours, and she was already redecorating.   
"My apologies if what you've found has not impressed well upon you," Fred said flatly. The AI did not respond, though his bio readouts scrolled by and changed colour yet again - a sort of purple now. 

Exceptionally quiet, this AI was far different than others he'd worked with before, insofar as totally lacking any fragment of personality. Fred hadn't yet seen her projected avatar, nor been addressed further than a scant hello, as handlers had monitored her integration with his neural lace; the hastily breathed greeting having felt as forced as anything.   
Eleutheria was her name.   
He'd already mispronounced it twice - a conspicuous chill running the length of his spine with each error.   
Truthfully, the lack of typical small talk could have been a considerable grace, if not for the worrying loss of communication altogether - the nigh on obsessive re-configuring of his onboard systems was equally concerning.   
Unsurprisingly, he hadn't been privy to much of her background, save for the fact that she'd been urgently transferred by a heavily armed ONI team from the Damascus Materials Testing Facility - the birthplace of MJOLNIR. There, she served in an oversight capacity to a nexus of eleven other AI. And that was all he knew.   
He strongly suspected she knew far more about him.   


It'd been an uneventful morning otherwise, which under normal circumstances would have been to his liking; however, certain recent developments had left him wanting for a bit of the extraordinary.   
Fred's eyes flicked up to access his private comms and open a Waypoint bar that scrolled by in a steady marquee. No new notifications, though his last message to Veta was now marked as 'read', and the record drew a small smile over his lips.   
  
Distracted as he was, Fred missed the subtle flash of red light against the edge illumination of the HUD before blindly turning the corner, and nearly crashed into two hapless lab techs that yelped in distress. One of the men backpedaled too quickly, losing his footing and landing hard on his rear.   
"What the hell!" the toppled tech cried out, rubbing a hand against his hip and leveling a sharp sneer at Fred while his colleague rushed to help him to his feet.   
"Watch where you're going, bucket-head! You could have smashed me like a banana!" The tech's coworker was speaking quickly and quietly, trying in vain to calm the incensed man.   
"Don't you have sensors and cameras in there? Or do you just expect other people to get out of your way?"   
Fred knew he should be apologizing, but in his own surprise he'd hardly managed to lift a hand toward the pair, before they scrambled up and hurried down the hall. The irate man turned one last time against the urging of his fellow, one hand still massaging his hip, as the other waved about in agitation. "NAVSPECWAR shouldn't be allowing their _dogs_ loose in the labs!" 

"I'm not with NAVSPECW-" Fred replied flatly. Sighing and letting his still raised hand drop to his side as the two turned a corner. It didn't matter if they knew his operational jurisdiction. The tech was right, he could have hurt him. With a disappointed shake of his head, Fred quickly closed Waypoint and continued on his way uninterrupted.   
Veta would get back to him when she could, and he'd enjoy the delight of her correspondence in an undistracted state, lest he flatten another sailor.   
_'You're a terrible influence, Inspector,'_ Fred thought, breathing an amused huff of laughter through his nose.

Boarding an empty lift, Fred keyed First Deck and watched the large doors sealing, just as a strange sensation coolly slithered through the center of his chest - a kind of lurid anxiousness; like the sort of hypersensation that pours in just before a firefight. Brow furrowing, Fred innately glanced to each side of the lift, searching and scanning, feeling slightly foolish as he took a quick peek over one shoulder as well. Plate steel wall - as if there were a reason to have expected anything else. The tension uncoiling just beneath his sternum begged to insist there was. He swallowed hard.  
The droning hum of the lift's cable-drawn motor was receding into the background as Fred raised a tentative hand to the port at the back of his helmet, fingertips sliding along the recessed edge, suddenly ever more aware of the cryptic entity housed at the base of his skull. 

Chills prickled over every inch of his skin as Fred blinked quickly against an increasingly narrowing cone of vision. Tight vibrations running the length of his fingers, quickly curling them back into his warming palms. The displaced unease burrowing deeper and deeper, into every muscle, wrapping around his tendons in tightening lashes. His heart rate was climbing.   
Thinning his eyes, Fred searched the data readouts collating his vitals in a continuous stream across the top of the HUD, to find the numbers flashing and fluctuating, as his body temperature ramped up enough to agitate the ambient thermal balancing sensors in his skinsuit and trigger a cooling response from the MJOLNIR's gel layer.   
Hazy after-images were burning across his sight as time began to slow. Jaw tightening. Mouth drying. Eyes searching and searching - searching...for what? 

His lips trembled. _'...are you doing this somehow?'_ Fred thought, while obsessively surveying every corner over again, instinctively scanning for an invisible threat. It seemed borderline paranoia to even think the AI could perceive his conscious thoughts. Fred bit his lip in unease.   
What would he do if she answered?

Were it possible though - an AI with indiscriminate potential to trigger unsolicited organic chemical responses directly through the neural lace? He didn't know enough about the science of AI integration to guess, but he'd been under the impression that even starship-grade 'Smart' AI were not permitted unfettered access to the MJOLNIR's core operating system coupled to his neural lace.  
His eyebrows quickly rose in distressed realization. _'Damascus...were there exceptions?'_   
Fred exhaled heavily, only just realizing how hard and shallow he'd been breathing. Pursing his lips, he tried to control the tidal volume, but he was already hyperventilating. Skin gone all hot and clammy. The faint glitter of light and dark splotches painted his peripheries.   
Fred knew what this was.

It was fear.   
Unremitting, rampaging, fear. The likes of which he hadn't experienced since...since perhaps before everything. _Before life began._   
He swallowed hard again, and the dryness of his throat burned; lips sticking together. 

If this AI had the capacity to alter body chemistry on the fly, and to such fierce degree - Fred grunted out a disgusted scoff - that certainly _felt_ like an important detail he'd of appreciated knowing _before_ plugging a monstrously classified stranger into his brain.   
Fred leaned his back to the wall and braced one elbow into a corner seam.   
The entire concept hinged on the absurd...but so did the phenomena taking place, he realized. Worse yet, he knew better than most about the ethical boundaries ONI was willing to skirt with flagrant abandon. That knowledge, specifically _so undefined_ , was enough to cause reasonable distress. No less at the moment, as a bead of sweat slipped down his brow and Fred helplessly watched his pounding heart rate continue to bound and climb.   
One hundred forty-four. One hundred forty-eight.   
He quietly promised himself he'd start asking more questions and pushing back a little firmer in the future when ONI came knocking. 

"What is happening?" Fred heard his voice hitch, trying desperately to clear his throat as he fought to control the growing and consuming urgency. "Answer me," he demanded, while watching his oxygen saturation dip below ninety-two. Ninety-one.   
_'Breathe. Breathe. It's not you, it's not real...'_

Still leaning into the corner, Fred shook out his head, and pounded a fist against the paneling, unconcerned with the protests of the metal.   
"Eleutheria, _answer me, dammit._ Do we need to return to the la-"   
The question ended in a sharp grunt, as Fred grit his teeth and narrowed his eyes against flashes of light exploding over his vision. The temporary white out gradually receded, only to reveal every illuminated element across the HUD flashing without rhythm. Overlapping lines of code rushing by in sub-second ribbons.   
"Eleutheria - stop," Fred squeezed his eyes shut tightly, with tears quickly collecting. Flash spots were stinging and blooming ever wider behind his eyelids. "Ele-what- _what is this?_ " He felt like he was going to be sick. Bending slightly at the waist now, he leaned his weight haphazardly against the groaning corner wall of the lift. The lift car was sturdy, but not designed to accept the exerted force of MJOLNIR; it would not hold him like this for long. 

A whining klaxon rang out, though Fred perceived it more as a muffled bass in his ears, overcome in the headrush while his temperature continued to rise, and drops of sweat clung to his eyelashes. Pulse still climbing - one hundred fifty-six. 

Fred's trembling hands scraped and grabbed hastily at the cowl seals under his helmet, missing them twice - three times. His fingers felt numb - arms too heavy. Bursts of spectral light were everywhere now in front of his tightly closed eyes - he practically tasted them, gripped in the explosive assault on his sensorium. Sweat and tears were dampening the helmet padding under his jaw.   
He'd be out cold soon enough.   
A scrambling fingertip finally caught the edge of a seal, but it slipped - the piercing tones punching through and shrieking in his ears as Fred finally separated his lips, and screamed. 

" **STOP.** "

The audible alarm immediately cut out, as the flurry of streaming data froze in place.   
His rasping, laboured, breath and blood rushing furiously through his ears were the only sounds. 

Fred, still leaning against the lift wall, attempted to relieve the paneling of some of his weight while he chanced a peek, watching myriad markers and reticles shiver as they disappeared one by one, and the HUD's edge illumination changed from orange to blue to green before the entire system rebooted and refreshed.   
Seconds ticked by in half-time before the MJOLNIR's core computer seized control, filling Fred's helmet with a pressurized hiss as the interior was hyper-oxygenated, and he breathed greedily of the saturated air. The hydrostatic gel finally cooling at a rate enough to begin chasing away the heat roiling under his skin. 

With his head hung low, Fred licked his dry lips, tasting salt and wanting nothing more than to rub his hands over his face, and wipe away at tight, tearful, eyes that stung and felt sticky. Keeping them closed, he worked on controlling his breathing; pulse steadily slowing, though his heart still pounded in his chest. 

Fred knew he hadn't been afraid just then - not _really_ ; not organically. It hadn't been real. He didn't know _what_ had just happened, or how to explain it.   
But he knew he certainly felt afraid **now**.

After an eternal descent, the lift came to a rest and Fred shakily moved away from the wall and stepped out, standing off to the side of the walkway, still catching his breath and letting his stomach settle. He didn't immediately realize he'd gripped the handrail in front of him, until he met resistance lifting each finger away from the deep indentations left in the steel as he released it; hands still trembling.   
Thankfully, the lift car lobby was empty, as Fred almost felt sick again all over, imagining scuttlebutt breaking out across the facility about a maloperative Spartan tromping around. 

There were so many questions, and in his rattled state, Fred wasn't totally sure where to start. Though, if he was honest with himself, it would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of indelicately ejecting her chip from his head and pocketing her the remainder of the operation.   
Fred waited instead. Waited until he felt able to gather a full breath - and exhaled slowly. 

"I'm not-" he took another breath. "I'm not going to pretend that what just happened wasn't extremely disturbing," Fred metered his volume; a frail rasp still crackling in his voice."You don't want to talk to me, and that's fine - just listen. I want the techs to reexamine your chip housing, as well as the data cube used in your initial transfer before we ge-" 

"Fredric, please identify - 'Unregistered RS6-2'?" 

The abruptness of the AI's interruption was only less startling than actually hearing her speak again; of what she was referring to, he had no idea, his head was still swimming.  
"What? I don't- _Clarify_." Fred replied rigidly, stifling an irritated sigh and rolling his eyes when she, predictably, did not answer.   
Logging the aberrant behaviour to an ever growing list, Fred suppressed the demanding urge to interrogate her further. It wouldn't help anything, and if the handlers in the lab were going to have any real opportunity to run some meaningful diagnostics, then he needed to settle all other preparatory arrangements first. 

After ensuring he was fully steady again, Fred finally entered the First Deck Maintenance Floor, careful to skirt along the outermost walls as he crossed the sprawl, surveying the looming architecture. Robotic armature ran the vertical aspect of an entire wall, climbing nearly seventy meters, caged in squared scaffolding that was webbed with catwalks and stairwells. Massive center-mounted rotary lift stalls with craft and vehicles of every stripe under maintenance and retrofit. Mostly, it was loud, with the Anchor's sailors and crew milling about by the hundreds; many too tasked to divert much attention to the lone Spartan astride their workspace. Fred was happy for it - he wasn't looking to cause any discomfort, or drum up rumours. It was a well known truth that no single UNSC vessel required help circulating gossip.   
He was headed for the starboard armory, where he knew he'd find Kelly and Linda, as well as the rest of their complement - a sparse attachment of four Section Zero operatives; the same heavily armed agents who had accompanied the team of techs that'd delivered Eleutheria to _Barbarus_ last night.   
Fred tightened his jaw as he recalled the sensations he endured in the lift. They'd refuse, deny, or claim ignorance to any line of questioning, but the Zeros knew what Eleutheria was; what she was capable of. 

Minding his steps between a crowded walkway, Fred settled his withering irritation by running the mission breakdown back through his head for the nth time - 

Sixteen days ago, ONI Section Zero had lost all contact with the UNSC _Whitetail_ \- an Eclipse-class prowler with a three-man operative team aboard, in possession of unknown assets. _Whitetail_ had performed a rapid, uncontrolled, exit maneuver from Shaw-Fujikawa space just along the outer veil of the Theta Ursae Majoris system, before going dark and cold. The stealth corvette was effectually automated, run predominantly by its onboard AI, Templeton. All attempts to hail the vessel had failed, with cryptoanalysis of the errors revealing the signals were being purposefully rebuffed - in addition, no outbound communications, even frayed signal static, could be detected.   
A clutch of sensor drones were deployed to investigate, with no resolution. All drones were assumed neutralized, but not before they'd been able to provide a workable dragnet, exposing the proximal area of _Whitetail's_ position.   
ONI then committed the UNSC _Voluminous_ , a Sahara-class prowler, to the task of surveilling, infiltrating, and, likely, scuttling _Whitetail_ , hoping to avoid any continued escalation. _Voluminous_ had reported contact, with emphasis on positive visualization of venting atmosphere from no less than three compartments.   
Contact with _Voluminous_ was subsequently lost thereafter.

Cue seventy-two hours ago: Blue Team is scrambled from the _Infinity_ , assigned to Sahara-class heavy prowler UNSC _Steady as She Goes_ , inbound to the nearby Support Anchor, UNSC _Barbarus_ , for tech asset and attachment retrieval prior to jump. Last night's hollow briefing had deigned the mission as little more than a benign escort - a brutally obvious deflection. It wasn't quite common practice to emergently scramble Blue Team, strategically blind, for basic guard duty. Why the details were being withheld, he wouldn't know. 

At oh-four-twenty-three this morning, he'd been urgently requested to the lab, where the Zeros themselves had finally looped him in to a messy intel purge that served as a situation report in name only, but had at least provided him the meat of the situation. 

Now, in less than a few hours, Blue Team and their attachment would be outbound for _Whitetail_ , with a primary objective of asset retrieval. The package identity - Classified. Naturally. ONI agents would handle identification and custody, while Blue Team provided overwatch security, and prepared the vessel for scuttle. Resistance was expected, but in what form was unknown.  
As if the situation couldn't be any more muddled, there was the matter of carrying Eleutheria into the shuffle and executing a vague secondary objective. All Fred really knew is that he'd be her porter, as none of the agents' neural implants were "capable of safely housing her" - a comforting detail, especially now, as he recalled the lift ride.   
Once on board the crippled Prowler, he had implicit instructions to introduce her to the _Whitetail's_ systems - ill-advised as it would seem, when it stood to reason that the vessel, and it's present AI, were both dangerously compromised. His requests for additional clarification to Eleutheria's role were pointedly disregarded, many times over.   
Certainly, she wouldn't be telling him either. 

Fred instinctively looked up as he passed beneath a large, enclosed, plasteel walkway suspended overhead. The massive eight meter wide tube structure snaked along the full center length of the deck with numerous offshoot access wells jutting out into switch-backed stair assembles at every ten meter stretch. Through its clear facade, he could see throngs of people moving along. The staggering scale and population of the UNSC's Anchors was always something awesome to behold in person.   
Looking back to the digital time readout on his HUD - which, if it was to be believed anyway - showed that he had two hours and forty-three minutes before loading and departure prep.   
Fred slowed his pace as he eyed the seconds ticking off - the font of the numbers had changed for a _fourth_ time. 

"It doesn't need to be **pretty** , it just needs to be _right_." Fred practically breathed the words out from between his teeth, taking care to ensure his voicemitter was off as he walked by several sailors and engineers working amidships - it was clear that those closest were already doing their best not to pointedly stare at him. No need to stoke their curiosities further with stiff one-way conversations. 

"It is not the aesthetics that concern me, Fredrick," the AI quickly answered, offering her most complete sentence yet. "It is your continual squinting. I am optimizing visuals for a zero zero point two six percent increase of acuity."  
The song-like, atmospheric, lilt to her voice made her sound as though she were speaking in a tunnel over water; resonant, and carrying each breath along like a shallow, mournful, echo. Fred thought the eerie, calming, but evocative quality of it reminded him of loon's wail - ghostly almost - he couldn't quite pin it. In fact, he felt it really would have been quite soothing, if not for all her troubling behaviour. 

"My eyes are _fine_ , Eloothia. I'm-" Fred forcibly paused as another frigid chill poured down the back of his neck, briery enough to force a visible tilt of his head. " _Among other things_ , I'm squinting because I'm confused by your severe lack of communication and unnecessary recalibrations. The standard layout on the HUD is my preference - please revert all amendments and refrain from any additional adjustments where situationally inappropriate. This is not a discussion. Is that clear?"

Her answer was either purposeful silence, or she was suffering from extreme hesitance. Either which, she drew out much longer than acceptable and Fred scoffed, sharp and heavy, abruptly stopping in place. After some quick deliberation, he turned to his right, heading instead toward an offshoot exit from the deck proper.  
"Fredrick, the armory is six hundred and one meters from this position, on our **previous** heading." Eleutheria chimed in again flatly, scrolling the mission timer and prep schedule along one side of the HUD.  
As Fred opened his mouth to reply, a nav point suddenly blinked in on his display, tailed by a brilliant orange directional pathway. His brow shot up, mouth still slightly agape, edging on disbelief at such a blatantly condescending gesture. He exhaled long and slow, keeping his tone even and stern.   
"I am well aware. We're going-"   
" _Eleutheria_ ," she interrupted once again. Fred maintained his pace, though his lips tightened to a thin line. "...my name is Eleutheria."

The air between them held uncomfortably stale. His HUD was still a neurotic mess. The lift ride from hell was hanging unaccounted for.

"...we're going somewhere else first," Fred said in a tone that demanded complicity. " **We need to talk.** "


End file.
